


Alone

by goldfinchex



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Asgard exists but it's a medieval-ish state, Depression, Gen, Insanity, Modern AU, Murder, POV Second Person, Prompt Fic, Suicide, Trigger Warnings, Trying my best to single out trigger warnings but it includes:, Unreliable Narrator, dubious moral character, i am bad at tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 22:58:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3399425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinchex/pseuds/goldfinchex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Alone, yes, that's the key word. The most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym." -Stephen King</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone

You killed your brother.

What are you? You do not know the answer to that, not anymore. They have always told you that murder was the worst crime any human could commit, that killing would rob you of your humanity, sever your soul from your body, but you don’t think that they have got that right.

As princes, the two of you have killed; princes did not get their hands dirty, but all of Asgard’s game was for you to hunt and kill, animal  _and_  human. You recall the first hunting expedition the two of you went on without father, when you dragged Sif and the Warriors Three—a silly name—with you. Thor shot the deer down from his place on his horse with ease, and you cheered with the others. But when you walked nearer to the deer and saw it sprawled on the ground, its wide brown eyes staring back at you helplessly as it bled out onto the snowy white floor, its life draining away, you sprinted away to regurgitate your lunch. Your brother’s friends pretended that they did not see your moment of weakness, and your brother just laughed.

You never made the same mistake again.

Afterwards, you were always ruthlessly efficient in killing.  Do you remember your first kill? Of course you do. It was a peasant man in the outskirts of the Vanaheim province, a man who dared steal from the princes. Even if the year’s harvest was lacking, he should have had stockpiles of wheat! What century was this?

Thor encouraged you, nominating you for the task. You made him somewhat proud, in the way an older brother could be, because you did not hesitate in pressing the trigger as you executed the offender. You grinned at him in return and felt that you had completed the unspoken rite of passage all Asgardian princes had undergone since the unification of the Asgardian states.

You felt no guilt. There were worse things than murder, you knew—rape and torture. Guilt was a lowly construct meant for the gods-fearing bourgeois, made to compel people to obey the law. You had always wondered if governments wanted the idea of gods to proliferate the population; people would be fearful of the threat of hell, and would not break the laws set in place by the ruling class. After all, great rulers were always born into their roles: they got the crowns without lifting a finger.

Clearly, royals were favoured by the gods, and the laws they set were the laws of the gods. Whatever a royal did was not frowned upon by the gods. Royals could do anything if all the royals wanted to do it.  

Remember the time you tried to eliminate an entire subhuman race? Father was furious. He cast you out as punishment. Father screamed at you, saying that you were acting out of your place. Thor found you later and said that you left the family of your own accord. Your memory told you otherwise. Thor truly believed in father’s lies, hadn’t he?

But you can’t summon the appropriate amount of anger anymore, not at Thor. You are many things, cheat, liar, killer, but you are not blasphemous. You cannot dishonour the dead. The gods cannot condemn murder for they have too killed, but they can condemn one who disrespects those that have descended into the underworld. Even royals cannot foul the name of the dead.

Ruthlessly efficient, a thrust of the knife through the heart. You plunged it into  _his_  heart. And that made all the difference. You killed  _him_  this time.

You killed a royal. A royal destined for the throne. Both of you were born to be kings. Thor would have gotten the throne first. Golden. Glorious. Good. Loved. Odinson.

You want to scream. You want to stand atop the point of the Eiffel Tower and scream to the thousands that gather at its foot each night that you have killed the Prince Thor, admired by thousands worldwide. You want to announce a triumph, that the First Odinson was stabbed by Loki-not-Odinson. The House of Laufey should be celebrating. You should be proud of your deed.

But no, no, no, no. It is not guilt. You do not know what it is, this crushing, crushing weight against your chest. This helplessness. This blackness that your life has become. You see nothing.

You cannot erase it from your mind, the moment of his death. You remember the way the knife found its way into soft, yielding flesh, the spurt of red that splattered against your pale hands. The look of sheer disbelief on his face. Your shock. How you stumbled backwards, gasping for breath. Then the blackness.

The blackness that won’t go away. You feel as though alone, cast upon a frozen rock in the middle of the unforgiving Norwegian sea in the dead of winter. You are alone, all alone on the rock. Is this crushing weight loneliness?

Is this your own personal hell?

You made this, didn't you, when you killed your brother. Fratricide. Regicide. The gods condemn such acts. You are condemned to eternal perdition—your own hell. It is no Christian hell, as the people on the mainland so dread. There are no fires. You don't burn, not from heat.  Away on the world’s hinterland of Asgard, everyone fears the cold. This cold that seeps into your bones and set in it, freezing your insides, turning your heart into ice. Eternal cold. Chill-your-bones cold. You have no place in Valhalla, nor do you have a place with the living. Any monster will never have that privilege. That is what you are, oh, oh, that is good. You see what you are now! A cold-blooded killer who killed your own brother!

You are going to be so very cold without the warmth of your brother. Monster or not, you're capable of shivering: everyone knows that the cold can burn.

You wonder if you can escape from the rock.

*****

Thor stared through the window before giving a great sigh, resigning to Jane’s persistent insistence that he sit on the pink linoleum chair.

The operation was finally completed.

_He is in a coma, the doctors had announced._

_For how long?_

_An indefinite period. We’re sorry, we've done all we can, everything Asgard, everything existing medical technology, has to offer._

_We understand. It’s not your fault. Thank you._

How did it come to this? How did his bright little brother, the little genius with sparkling green eyes, lapse into madness? He had always been here for Loki—why would he have tried to kill himself?

Thor did not think that he would ever sleep again: his dreams would be plagued by the memory of those final moments: the memory of Loki running from them, the madness stealing the mischievous gleam away from his eyes, screaming and sobbing hysterically about _betrayal_ and how _I fell_ , before he stopped, laughed as he spun around, and pushed the sharp blade through skin mottled with bruises and marred by scratches.

He would not forget how the mad light in Loki's eyes faded away, and how the subsequent terror that mingled with the helplessness of an epiphany-that-came-too-late settled in them.

Loki had always called him a fool. The roles were reversed now. Little brother, why were you behaving so foolishly? Why, why, why?     

He wanted to cry, but his tears wouldn't come. Jane’s hand was warm, but he felt strangely cold.

**Author's Note:**

> ...I've not actually read any Stephen King. Prompt is from Tumblr.
> 
> Disclaimer: This author doesn't support the violation of laws, especially those that result in capital/corporal punishment. 
> 
> Do note that if you're depressed, get a therapist and support group(s). Whereas, if you're actually insane... Uh you might want to consider a psychiatrist? If you want to commit murder, please don't.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I do need to clear my search history now...


End file.
